My point is comparing games releasing 12 years apart like this is redundant, isn't it expected that the sequel/next game from the same studio should have better quality (in this case RPG) than the previous one?
In the years after the 1st release till next game/sequel, devs can have more experience/money/bigger team/ect.
I know what your point is, it's just not applicable to Game Design, only to graphical fidelity and perhaps controls and smoothness. Throwing more money or a bigger team isn't going to make the actual Role Playing better, and historically the opposite has happened. Chasing profits leads to making games with more mass appeal, and removes niches.
Again, see Morrowind, Fallout 1/2/New Vegas, Arcanum, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, and more all have vastly superior RPG mechanics to Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 4, and Starfield, despite having smaller budgets, a less experienced team, and less money.
the design being worse is baffling to me, they could've copied obsidian's homework and added the basebuilding/ship building shit and it would've been good.
They did, that's why there's traits and actual skill checks again. However, they still chase that bag and as such made it as generic and profitable as possible.
What they should have been doing is shamelessly copying No Man's Sky while shoveling their own shit into there. The "exploration" in Starfield actively pisses me off and I haven't even touched it in weeks because I uninstalled it after slogging through the tutorial section
My point is comparing games releasing 12 years apart like this is redundant, isn't it expected that the sequel/next game from the same studio should have better quality (in this case RPG) than the previous one?
In the years after the 1st release till next game/sequel, devs can have more experience/money/bigger team/ect.
I know what your point is, it's just not applicable to Game Design, only to graphical fidelity and perhaps controls and smoothness. Throwing more money or a bigger team isn't going to make the actual Role Playing better, and historically the opposite has happened. Chasing profits leads to making games with more mass appeal, and removes niches.
Again, see Morrowind, Fallout 1/2/New Vegas, Arcanum, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, and more all have vastly superior RPG mechanics to Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 4, and Starfield, despite having smaller budgets, a less experienced team, and less money.
the design being worse is baffling to me, they could've copied obsidian's homework and added the basebuilding/ship building shit and it would've been good.
They did, that's why there's traits and actual skill checks again. However, they still chase that bag and as such made it as generic and profitable as possible.
What they should have been doing is shamelessly copying No Man's Sky while shoveling their own shit into there. The "exploration" in Starfield actively pisses me off and I haven't even touched it in weeks because I uninstalled it after slogging through the tutorial section